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What is it that you should be doing right now? Inking your comic? Writing your novel? Practicing piano? Working your job?

I’m willing to bet that there is at least one thing you’re procrastinating in order to read this post. While I appreciate it, you should consider if this indicative of a larger problem. If this is your first break, then by all means enjoy yourself and relax! However, if this is the millionth post you read while procrastinating, you may want to consider you are exhibiting some signs of poor self-discipline.

Weight loss is often a very popular New Year’s resolution, and one that a lot of people struggle with. Sure, those first few weeks go well. You’re eating your salads and soups, you’re drinking your water, etc. Of course, everyone is allowed a cheat day so you can eat that chocolate cake you’ve been saving, right? Only, suddenly the next day you’re sad and that cheat day becomes two cheat days. Soon, everything has spiraled out of control, and the goal of losing weight is lost to the abyss. Even if it wasn’t your New Year’s resolution, this is often how weight loss spirals into failure regardless.

Weight loss is hard. There’s no way around it. If it was easy, the anecdote above would be far less common. However, as someone who has lost an enormous amount of weight in my life, I can tell you that weight loss is possible. Given my own successes with it, I feel it might be helpful to some for me to share my tips regarding the subject. So, if this is something you’d be interested in, read on!

Web design can be hard. Whether you’re creating a site for a comic, a store, or just a portfolio of sorts, they all offer different sorts of challenges. This is often the case regardless of how you make the site (in other words, whether you use a website builder or code it from scratch). Choices of font, layout, and the likes all come into play throughout the process, and it is inevitably a trial that tests both a creator’s aesthetic abilities as well as their ability to write, organize, and beyond.

Now, I certainly wouldn’t consider myself an expert web-designer (if that wasn’t obvious). There are a lot of things I don’t understand, such as common SEO practices, logo design, and graphic theming to name a few. However, I have dabbled enough to feel confident in naming things you shouldn’t do. As such, I would like to give you three tips today for what not to do when designing a website.

These tips are more for absolute beginners, so if you know a bit about web design this probably isn’t the article for you. Without further ado, let’s begin.

So, you’ve got your big project planned, but feel overwhelmed because there’s a lot to do. Or, even worse, you’re in the middle of the project and keep missing deadlines, keep forgetting to do particular parts, etc.. These are generally all symptoms of lacking organization.

From my experience, lacking organization for your project is the quickest way to kill it, whether you’re working alone or with a group. Even if you think you can remember everything off the top of your head, distractions in life will always pop up and prompt you to forget things. As such, in my opinion having good organization for any project is the first key to success. Surprisingly, though, few people ever seem to have a clear idea on how to get themselves organized. Thus, the purpose of my article today is to give you my tips and tricks for getting organized and staying on top of your project.

Hey everyone. There won’t be a post this week. I’m very sorry to miss the update day. Sadly, one of my cats passed away this evening so I’m just not in an emotional fit state to update the blog this week.

Posting should resume normally next week. Thank you in advance for understanding during this time of grief. 😥

Speaking from a game development perspective, you’ve most likely heard the word “indie developer” thrown around. It’s becoming quite the phenomenon lately, especially with the numerous changes that benefits indie developer. These changes range from financial support systems like Kickstarter to platforms that make indie games readily available (circa the Steam Greenlight program). There are also numerous engines available to the public now such as Unity and RPG Maker. All in all, the industry scene has changed quite a bit for indie developers, allowing them more access to tools to make games and more access to people to play those games.

All that being said, none of these changes have affected how we apply the word “indie developer.” Yet, for me personally, I have to wonder if the term is applied too broadly now? With more tools and more platforms comes a wider variety of quality in these games. Is it fair that all indie developers get lumped into one group? That is the topic I wish to explore today, or more so, apply my opinion to.

Welcome to Part 2 everyone~! Yesterday, I discussed why and how webcomic platform Tapastic is alienating users by focusing mostly on its mobile app. In this post, we’re going to take a look at Discord, whose company practices handle different devices in an opposite manner. I will also put together a conclusion about the overall effect this has on users, whether good or bad.

Today I won’t talk about an actual platform to host your comics the traditional, web way, but the traditional, old way combined with the modern joys – a online magazine! A few months ago I ran into StArt Faire, a new magazine accepting a variety of comics. So I joined, and it was a great idea! Here’s what it’s about in their own words:

StArt Faire is an online monthly comic magazine with an emphasis on fantasy themed comics appropriate for people 13 and older. It was created by an artist for other artists and fans of comics as a non profit project that aspires to unite artists in a collaborative effort to bring the concept of the Japanese comic magazine to an international and online format.

StArt Faire’s Aims: To help promote artists and their comics, to be a community that helps support each other, and to provide…

Hello reader~! Welcome and thank you for stumbling onto my blog. As this is the first post, I felt like I should write a bit about the purpose of this blog, ya know, the usual stuff.

First off hello, I’m RebelVampire, and it’s nice to meet you. At current I serve as the Writing Director for StArt Faire magazine. On the side, I work towards becoming an indie game developer and a skilled artisan in a variety of trades. I have a passion for intellectual pursuits and spend a good portion of my day learning about topics just for the sake of knowing them. Outside of that, I’d say the primary thing to know about me is I really love cats and space.

Now, as for the blog, to be frank its existence is mostly for me to have a medium through which to practice writing. Like numerous creative pursuits, writing is something you gain skill for through practice; so, I wanted something extra through which I could practice a different style of writing. I also wanted a platform via which I could talk about topics that interest me.

However, that being said, I would hope that some of the topics on this blog would be of interest to some of you readers. Most things on here will, of course, be my opinion (and believe me, I’m no expert on everything). Nevertheless, you will find a variety of topics from me analyzing video games to maybe the occasional post that’s just sharing some awesome content that I admire. There will really be just a hodge podge blog of topics (for the time being at least), so there should hopefully be something for everyone.

I definitely want to hear from anyone else who stumbles on this blog, so never be afraid to leave a comment or contact me. 🙂 Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and even if people disagree, I’d like this to be a community that is open to non-malicious discussion.

I hope everyone, including myself, has a great time here, so cheers to the debut of a new blog~!